Foul, even for Napoles

For her involvement in the P10 billion PDAF scam, Janet Lim Napoles has become nothing less than the personification of evil in the public's eye. She has been subjected to all sorts of indignities no one ought to ever be subjected to in this supposedly decent and civilized society of ours.

I am not trying to defend Napoles. I do not believe she was unaware of her actions and the consequences they would bring. I am just appalled by the sheer abandon with which people are castigating her with impunity, and in ways that make me wonder if there is still some compassion and humanity left in the human race.

Yes she stole billions. Our billions. But how many of those now flogging her would not if they could, especially if they thought they could get away with it. Napoles actually could have gotten away with it, had she not had a quarrel with her cousin Ben Hur Luy, a quarrel that in all probability was over money.

Stealing is bad. Stealing billions even more bad. But let her justice be in accordance with, as the word suggests, what is just. There are laws that deal with her crime, and provisions that define how she should suffer as a result. Right now, none of that has come to pass.

What has come to pass is that Napoles is being dragged through a public trial by publicity. Not only that, she is being shamed even over things that have absolutely nothing to do with what she is being made to account for.

For instance, why has it been published that the vaginal bleeding she is said to be suffering could have been due to intimate physical contact, the insinuation being that she could have had sexual intercourse while confined in the hospital.

That may not have been the context of how the information was obtained -- in a court hearing of her motion for continued hospital confinement instead of being whisked straight away to police detention -- but that is clearly the implication as a result of the irresponsible publication.

Jesus Christ, have these people lost all sense of kindness? The need for justice does not necessarily kill kindness? If that were so, we would all be killing ourselves today, for in one way or another, we offend others as others offend us, and it is only kindness that stands in the way to the precipice.

Napoles is a mother. At 50 she is probably a grandmother. That does not mean she can no longer be sexually active. But her sexual secrets are not something you parade in public. They are not information vital to the resolution of this sordid chapter in our lives called the PDAF scam.

What motive is there behind the publication of the possibility that the bleeding of Napoles is due to sexual intercourse? Medically speaking, sexual intercourse can in fact cause bleeding. But of what relevance is it to the scam? Of what value is it to the case she is facing?

What the suggestion -- that Napoles may have had sexual intercourse within a reasonable time as to cause her current bleeding -- does is cast her in even more disgusting light, way beyond any Christian charity as may be expected from this the only Christian country in Asia.

What a shame that citizens of such a Christian country can allow themselves to be a party to such an expansive display of cruelty to a human being who, for all intents and purposes, is virtually flat on the ground, unable to defend herself.

Napoles must be made to account for her sins. But if in so doing we sin ourselves, then what is the purpose of going through a process pretending to be civilized when in the end we are unmasked as being no better than the person we are judging?

To a certain extent I believe Napoles richly deserves the pain and humiliation she is now suffering. But I can never accept and go along with the foul and disappointing resort by some to employ the public sale and disclosure of the deepest and most private aspects of Napoles' personal life just to prove a point.